CIV IV GOTYE Installation Hangs on Vista 64-bit

[Fraser]

First, thank you everyone for making all of the other troubleshooting posts. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find the answer to my CIV IV Game of the year edition installation problems in them.

Symptoms:
1. Complete hang of a fresh Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit installation during installation.
i. This hang occurs intermittently at various points, usually while unpacking ART0.???, or *.bik.
ii. It always hangs at "checking for game assets and updating as appropriate" after disk three, if it got that far. The quotation is approximate.
iii. The hang, when looked at in perfmon shows 100% disk usage and a quick closure of a number of processes. Eventually perfmon fails as well.
iv. There is no event log entry save the fact that I shut down irregularly thereafter.
v. ctrl-alt-delete fails during the hang.
2. Works well on a laptop with XP.
3. It does this when running in various compatibility modes, with administrator privileges, when installed from disks copied to the desktop, and when the installShield directory (C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\InstallShield) has been renamed.

Notes:
1. I have adequate disk space, and memory, and an NVidia graphics card.
2. There is no error message, just a hang.

Any help would be appreciated. This is getting frustrating.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

What is your memory voltage? Is it at the RAM's specified voltage, or is the motherboard set to "Auto" for RAM voltage? How much RAM do you have?

Also, do you have service pack 1, or have you updated to SP2?

Do you have the most up to date driver for your CD drive?

Things you can try if your RAm voltage is ok:

1. Turn off UAC.
2. Disable DEP for anything but Windows processes.
3. Turn off any Antivirus program while installing.
4. As a last resort, turn off the Compatibility Assistant.
5. As weird as this sounds (and it shouldn't be necessary, but some OEM editions of Vista are strange this way), if you have more than 4 GB of RAM, take out all but one stick (leave a minimum of 2 GB in the machine), and then install. I had to do that with my HP printer to get the driver to install. It's an old Vista issue with 64 bit that has been fixed for a while by MS, but some older OEM versions don't have it unless the hotfix is applied. Make sure that Windows is completely patched and up to date.

Good luck.

 

[Fraser]

Hello,

1. I tried disabling DEP. No go.
2. I tried disabling UAC (UAP). No go.
i. I waited for a very long time and got an error message associated with ntvdm64.dll which appears to convert strings from "Program Files" to "Program Files(x86)". The error went something along hte lines of ntvdm64.dll is corrupt or isn't meant to run on windows.
ii. I had to hard reboot again.
iii. I am now reinstalling windows Vista because it won't boot anymore.

I think that I am going to give up on this one.

 

[Fraser]

P.S.

1. I don't think that I have any anti-virus installed. I am behind a strict firewall.
2. My ram voltage is set to automatic.
3. 4 GB of ram. I haven't yet tried removing a stick of RAM.
i. I hadn't yet fully updating vista (it had only been two days).

Thanks.

 

[Fraser]

A faulty hard drive.
I had had a number of inconsistencies in my computer's behaviour. Installing CIV IV was just one of them. After reinstalling vista x64 on a new hard drive the installation worked beautifully.